In Enemy Territory - Shannon West Page 0,4
his other “heathen” parent, Kyle, apparently didn’t intend to do so. Kylon’s parents had a mixed marriage between two species who normally hated one another—the savage Lycans and the equally fierce Tygerians. They had been on opposite sides during the long war between the Alliance and the Axis and had met as enemies during the height of hostilities. Their marriage had always been a passionate, often volatile mixture of love and discord.
A knock came on the door just after Kylon had finished reading a communication from his omak Kyle, as a matter of fact, who had been complaining to Kylon that he didn’t call often enough, and that if he didn’t come home for a visit soon, Kyle would make Taz speak sternly to Kylon’s commander. The idea that Taz would have the time or inclination for something so trivial was amusing, since the last time he’d talked to Taz, he’d been embroiled in a contentious selection of a new War Minister, the previous one having been tragically killed in a freak accident weeks ago. In fact, there had been some recent talk about whether or not the previous Minister’s death had actually been an accident and not a political assassination. The investigation was ongoing.
It all seemed very far away from Kylon’s life here on Laltana, on what was practically the other side of the universe. Kylon was still grinning at his omak’s idle threat when the door swung open and Prince Larz walked in. The prince was a big, handsome Tygerian closely resembling both his father, King Davos, and his older brother, Prince Mikos.
“Don’t you look comfortable?” Prince Larz grinned as Kylon quickly sat up and pulled his booted feet down from the desk, then stood up to bow low from the waist.
“Your Excellency,” he said, as Larz frowned.
“I told you to stop all that,” he growled.
Kylon grinned at him and flopped back in his chair. “Should I call you ‘Your Highness’ then?”
“You’ll please me best if you say neither one. Call me Larz, like you always have.”
He and Larz had known each other on Tygeria, though Kylon was older and was good friends with Larz’s brother Mikos. Kylon had been a training instructor at the Academy that Larz would have attended, if not for the fact that the ship Larz had been traveling on to the facility had been hijacked by pirates almost five cycles ago. All the young men and crewmen on board were either killed during the hijacking or taken and sold into slavery. Larz himself had disappeared for nearly four cycles, and when he finally resurfaced on the distant planet of Laltana, his family learned he had been sold as well and held there on the former Alliance planet as a soldier-slave, although the tables and his fortunes had certainly turned since then.
When Prince Mikos had finally located Larz and arrived to “rescue” him, Larz had already managed to save himself. By the time the marines landed, in the form of the Bloody Prince himself with a full contingent of storm troopers, to save the day, Larz had already mm managed to become a celebrated war hero in the Laltanan army and the enthusiastic lover of the young Herkon king, Janos.
Larz had refused to leave Laltana afterward, despite his family’s demands and his omak Blake’s outright pleas. He had fallen too deeply in love by then with King Janos, who wouldn’t leave his home planet. Janos’s memories of being a prisoner of war on Tygeria were still too painfully vivid for him to think about returning. Larz had decided to stay with Janos, and he had claimed him as his mate, much to his brother Mikos’s disgust.
There was still a huge rift between the brothers over the issue of Larz choosing his “kidnapper” over his family, and Kylon knew that Mikos worried about it more than he let on. Even though there was a vast distance between Kylon and Mikos now that they were on two different planets, they were still in contact, though Kylon suspected it had something to do with the fact that Mikos was also able to keep tabs on Larz that way too. Mikos had wanted Larz to return home when they found him and had been prepared to force him, but Larz’s omak had stepped in. Blake, though only a human consort, wielded great influence over his mate, King Davos, and his son, Mikos—indeed, over the entire family.
The fight between the brothers came about because Mikos had convinced his father